Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

A few weeks ago This Week in Fintech announced, in partnership with Sila, the rebrand of the 5,000 member Global Finnovation slack community to TWIF Finnovation!

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Funding 💸

Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe.

🇪🇺 B2B BNPL provider Mondu raised €20m in debt from VVRB.

🇪🇺 Credit analytics platform Faire raised a €3m seed round from angel investors.

🇪🇺 AI focused asset manager Rubinstein & Schmiedel raised CHF 25m seed round.

🇪🇺 B2B financial engagement provider dimply raised a €1m seed round.

🇪🇺 Travel expense management provider Mindento raised a PLN 1.5m seed round.

🇪🇺 Blockchain app tester Tatum raised a $41.5m round from Octopus Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners, 3VC, Tensor Ventures and DEPO Ventures.

🇪🇺Web3 low-code platform Settlemint raised a €16m Series A from Molten Ventures, Medici Ventures, OTB Ventures and more.

🇪🇺 Bank transaction aggregator Banktrack raised a €1m seed round from Indexa Capital, K Fund, 4Founders Capital and others.

🇪🇺Risk management platform Trustpair raised a €20m round from Breega, Axeleo Capital and Tikehau Ace Capital.

🇬🇧 Investing app Hedgehog raised £1.56m on crowdfunding platform Seedrs.

🇬🇧 Payment operations platform Payable raised a $6.1m seed round led by CRV and Earlybird and also included The Fintech Fund and angel investors.

🇬🇧 GoHenry raised $55m from Edison Partners, Revaia and Nexi, to expand globally.

🇬🇧Impact data provider Net Purpose raised a £10m Series A from Revenet, MTech Capital, Illuminate Financial, Exceptional Ventures and ETF Partners.

🇬🇧 Solar farm investment fintech Energy Shift raised a $120k seed round from Techstars.

🇬🇧Financial literacy platform Blackbullion raised a £2.5m seed round from Calyx Venture Fund, MPA Education and Stanley Fink.

🌍 Airwallex raised another $100m extension to its Series E.

₿ Digital asset management company xalts raised a $6m seed round co-led by Citi Ventures and Accel.

₿ Lender Moon Mortgage raised a $3.5m seed round.

₿ Web3 security platform Blowfish raised a $11.8m seed round led by Paradigm.

Challenger Banking 🚀

🇪🇺 Debt collection startup Pair Finance is sold for €100m to Pollen Street Capital.

🇪🇺 N26 operating results for 2021 saw losses increase from €151m to €172m.

🇬🇧 Property lender LendInvest has struck a £180m lending partnership with Lloyds and increased an existing deal with JP Morgan to £1bn.

🇬🇧 LHV UK is buying the lending business of Bank North.

🇬🇧 OakNorth Bank has acquired a 50% stake in property lender ASK Partners.

🇬🇧 Comply Advantage partners with Resistant AI to launch a new financial crime tool to monitor transactions. CA founder Charlie Delingpole is stepping back into a Chairman role and handing over CEO reins to its CFO Vatsa Narasimha.

🇬🇧 Revolut Shops, a shopping service, has launched in Ireland with 3% cashback with leading brands.

🌍 Apple has partnered with Goldman Sachs to add a high-yield savings account to its credit card

🌍 Brex is laying off 11% of its workforce.

Digital Assets ₿

🇪🇺 The EU Commission has launched a proposal to study real-time monitoring of DeFi on Ethereum.

🇪🇺 The EU passed its landmark MiCA regulation which asks crypto issuers to publish white papers and asks stablecoin companies to meet capital requirements.

🇪🇺 UK based BVNK has secured a Spanish registration as a Virtual Asset Services Provider.

🌍 Binance suffered a hack on its BSC Token Hub with $100m in BNB stolen.  The BSC went back online quickly.

🌍 Visa and FTX are partnering to offer crypto-linked debit cards to customers in 40 countries.

🌍 A much anticipated crypto report from the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) landed which said believes federal agencies already have the authority to oversee most of the crypto sector.

🌍 Circle is launching an institutional digital identity system based on open source framework Verite.

🌍 The Reserve Bank of India is launching a pilot for a digital rupee.

🌍 JP Morgan and Visa are to connect their global private blockchain networks.

🌍 BNY Mellon has launched a digital custody platform.

🌍 Google has partnered with Coinbase to accept crypto payments for cloud services and will also use the exchange’s custody service. Coinbase is to use Google’s cloud services for its blockchain infrastructure.

🌍 Solana based DeFi platform Mango was exploited for $100m with the MNGO token down 40%. The developers blamed faulty oracles.

🌍 The SEC is investigating Yuga Labs to see if the NFTs it issues, the Bored Ape Yacht Club and Ape Coin, should be subject to the same disclosure rules as traditional securities.

🌍 Tether has reportedly eliminated riskier commercial paper from its reserves in the wake of Terra’s collapse.

Traditional Banking 🏦

🇪🇺 A joint venture between Deutsche Bank and Fiserv announced in 2020 has been announced called FSDB Merchant Services with a corresponding brand Vert.

🇪🇺 German savings banks  are reportedly switching from Mastercard to Visa due to the former phasing out its Maestro solution despite a Mastercard debit solution available.  40% are making the switch to Visa from a previous 3% market share for Visa.

🇬🇧 HSBC has improved approval process time for receivables finance from one or two months to only 48 hours using Trade Ledger technology.

🇬🇧 Barclays is rolling out cashback without a purchase at thousands of locations in the UK.

🇬🇧 UK financial institutions blame legacy systems and no regulatory clarify for the lack of use of machine learning.

🌍 Goldman Sachs are reportedly reorganising its Marcus consumer banking business and redistributing it into its wealth management business after mounting losses.

Fintech Infrastructure 🚧

🇪🇺 EBA Clearing, The Clearing House and SWIFT have announced plans to deliver the Immediate Cross-Border Payments (IXB) service.

🇪🇺 Santander and Google Cloud have partnered to launch a service to help companies migrate legacy systems to the cloud.

🇪🇺 Tink has extended its partnership with Snoop for personalised and contextual money-saving insights.

🇬🇧 Research from ClearBank found fintechs are losing $11m a year due to product delays due to BaaS providers.

🇬🇧 The FCA is increasing conditions for banks that are considering branch or ATM closures.

🇬🇧 Railsr has selected SurePay as its vendor for confirmation of payee services.

🇬🇧 Digital receipts startup Flux is closing down its receipts and cashback network in the UK.

🇬🇧 Prudential has partnered with Google Cloud for its health and wealth platform, Pulse.

🌍 Bank of America has made its Pay by Bank solution available for € payments offered in conjunction with Banked.

🌍 Worldline is to enable Indian tourists in Europe to use their domestic payment schemes to pay for shopping using  QR codes.

🌍 The Australian Securities Exchange selected Google Cloud as its preferred cloud partner.

Payments 💰

🇬🇧 UK fraud platform Ravelin and Mastercard are partnering to delivery a fraud solution to help merchants validate consumers identity.

🇬🇧 The PSR published its final decision on remedies following its card-acquiring market review focused around transparency on pricing, engagement to merchants to shop around for other deals and more easily enabling switching.

🌍 PayPal was reportedly working on a policy to withdraw $2,500 from SMB accounts if they are found to have “spread misinformation”. It has since apologised and called the new policy “an error”. It also launched an all-in-one POS solution.

🌍 Afterpay is adding a new payment option for consumers, a monthly option to spread payments over a 6 or 12 months with no late fees or compounding interest.

🌍 A McKinsey report has estimated global payments revenue hit $2.1trn globally in 2021, rebounding 11% from a tough 2020.

Regulatory Corner 🔎

🇬🇧 The FCA has found 25% of consumers are vulnerable to scams when they look to withdraw their pension savings.

Longer reads 📜

• Makers vs. Takers - Marc Rubinstein
• The single unified framework for operating a neobank - Samir Rao
• The State of Crypto: Oct' 22 - Jpizzolato.eth
• Ethereum’s Second-Layer Projects Duke It Out for Dominance - Sam Kessler

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See you next week!